She put out a hand to him as they walked. "But, Piers, that--is not the way to make me love you."

"I know--I know," he said quickly; and then haltingly: "I've been--so beastly lonely, Avery. Make allowances for me--forgive me!"

He had not taken her hand; she slipped it into his. "I do," she said simply. She felt his fingers close tensely, but in a moment they opened again and set her free.

He did not utter another word, merely walked on beside her till they reached the Vicarage gate. She thought he would have left her there, but he did not. They went up the drive together to the porch.

From his kennel at the side of the house Mike barked a sharp challenge that turned into an unmistakable note of welcome as they drew near. Avery silenced him with a rea.s.suring word.

She found the key, and in the darkness of the porch she began to fumble for the lock.

Piers stooped. "Let me!"

She gave him the key, and as she stood up again she noted the brightness of the fanlight over the floor. She thought that she had lowered the light at leaving; she had certainly intended to do so.

Very softly Piers opened the door. It swung noiselessly back upon its hinges, and the full light smote upon them.

In the same instant a slim, white figure came calmly forward through the hall and stopped beneath the lamp.

Olive Lorimer, pale, severe, with fixed, accusing eyes, stood confronting them.

"Mrs. Denys!" she said, in accents of frozen surprise.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES

The encounter was so amazing, so utterly unlooked for, that Avery had a moment of downright consternation. The child's whole air and expression were so exactly reminiscent of her father that she almost felt as if she stood before the Vicar himself--a culprit caught in a guilty act.

She looked at Olive without words, and Olive looked straight back at her with that withering look of the righteous condemning the unG.o.dly which so often regarded a dumb but rebellious congregation through the Vicar's stern eyes.

Piers, however, was not fashioned upon timid lines, and he stepped into the hall without the faintest sign of embarra.s.sment.

"Hullo, little girl!" he said. "Why aren't you in bed?"

The accusing eyes turned upon him. Olive seemed to swell with indignation. "I was in bed long ago," she made answer, still in those frozen tones. "May I ask what you are doing here, Mr. Evesham?"

"I?" said Piers jauntily. "Now what do you suppose?"

"I cannot imagine," the child said.

"Not really?" said Piers. "Well, perhaps when you are a little older your imagination will develop. In the meantime, if you are a wise little girl, you will run back to bed and leave your elders to settle their own affairs."

Olive drew herself up with dignity. "It is not my intention to go so long as you are in the house," she said with great distinctness.

"Indeed!" said Piers. "And why not?"

He spoke with the utmost quietness, but Avery caught the faintest tremor in his voice that warned her that Olive was treading dangerous ground.

She hastened to intervene. "But of course you are going now," she said to him. "It is bedtime for us all. Good-night! And thank you for walking home with me!"

Her own tone was perfectly normal. She turned to him with outstretched hand, but he put it gently aside.

"One minute!" he said. "I should like an answer to my question first. Why are you so determined to see me out of the house?"

He looked straight at Olive as he spoke, no longer careless of mien, but implacable as granite.

Olive, however, was wholly undismayed. She was the only one of the Vicar's children who had never had cause to feel a twinge of fear. "You had better ask yourself that question," she said, in her cool young treble. "You probably know the answer better than I do."

Piers' expression changed. For a single instant he looked furious, but he mastered himself almost immediately. "It's a lucky thing for you that you are not my little girl," he observed grimly. "If you were, you should have the slapping of your life to-night. As it is,--well, you have asked me for an explanation of my presence here, and you shall have one. I am here in the capacity of escort to Mrs. Denys. Have you any fault to find with that?"

Olive returned his look steadily with her cold grey eyes while she considered his words. She seemed momentarily at a loss for an answer, but Piers' first remarks were scarcely of a character to secure goodwill or allay suspicion. She rapidly made up her mind.

"I shall tell Miss Whalley in the morning," she said. "My father said I was to go to her if anything went wrong." She added, with a malevolent glance towards Avery, "I suppose you know that Mrs. Denys is under notice to leave at the end of her month?"

Piers glanced at Avery too--a glance of swift interrogation. She nodded very slightly in answer.

He looked again at Olive with eyes that gleamed in a fashion that few could have met without quailing.

"Is she indeed?" he said. "I venture to predict that she will leave before then. If you are anxious to impart news to Miss Whalley, you may tell her also that Mrs. Denys is going to be my wife, and that the marriage will take place--" he looked at Avery again and all the hardness went out of his face--"just as soon as she will permit."

Dead silence followed the announcement. Avery's face was pale, but there was a faint smile at her lips. She met Piers' look without a tremor. She even drew slightly nearer to him; and he, instantly responding, slipped a swift hand through her arm.

Olive, sternly judicial, stood regarding them in silence, for perhaps a score of seconds. And then, still undismayed, she withdrew her forces in good order from the field.

"In that case," she said, with the air of one closing a discussion, "there is nothing further to be said. I suppose Mrs. Denys wishes to be Lady Evesham. My father told me she was an adventuress. I see he was right."

She went away with this parting shot, stepping high and holding her head poised loftily--an absurd parody of the Vicar in his most clerical moments.

Avery gave a little hysterical gasp of laughter as she pa.s.sed out of sight.

Piers' arm was about her in a moment. He held her against his heart.

"What a charming child, what?" he murmured.

She hid her face on his shoulder. "I think myself she was in the right,"

she said, still half laughing. "Piers, you must go."

"In a moment. Let me hear from your own dear lips first that you are not--not angry?" He spoke the words softly into her ear. There was only tenderness in the holding of his arms.

"I am not," she whispered back.

"Nor sorry?" urged Piers.

She turned her face a little towards him. "No, dear, not a bit sorry; glad!"